In the United States alone there are some 46 million households with pets, and of those, 65% are larger breed dogs. The overall market for pets is $50 billion per year, and about 50% of that is dog owners. Pet owners and pets alike prefer each others' companionship, even when traveling by vehicle.
Pets, particularly dogs, are always ready for a ride in an SUV, crossover or other vehicle having some degree of interior space.
The rear door of a SUV or a crossover typically opens to an elevated floor, thus requiring the pet to leap up or be lifter up onto the floor of the rear bay. This serves well for younger dogs but as they grow older and joints deteriorate, the leap is highly challenging or totally impossible. Furthermore, in this arrangement the pet occupies practically the entire length and width of the bay, thus leaving no space available for other utility, such as storage of groceries, sporting goods, hunting equipment and dog paraphernalia.
Even then, the dog requires restraint, thus leading to the owners utilizing wire or rope barriers or the like partitioning the front and rear of the vehicle. This still leaves the rear of the vehicle totally dedicated to the pet, without space for other cargo.
The problem with loading dogs, and particularly larger dogs, into the vehicle often involves the purchase of a generic ladder or the like, which might be foldable or collapsible to be stored in the back seat and deployed at the loading spot. To make the load, the driver removes the ladder from the back seat and unfolds the sections to lean the top end against the bumper or rear of the vehicle to hopefully allow the dog to climb up the ladder without falling to the right or left or destabilizing the ladder. The problem is exacerbated in foul weather when the ladder ramp may be exposed to the elements and the bottom end submerged in mud or water, often resulting in unequal loading and risk and fright to the animal as he or she seeks to climb the ramp.
It has long been known that there is a critical need for lift and ramp devices for older dogs. There are several reasons why this need has grown over the years.
First, older pets are not viewed as expendable, and owners of those with mobility limitations often seek various devices to maximize the quality and length of life for both the animal and owner, such as detachable wheels that may be strapped to the animal to provide mechanical means of independent movement or lightweight portable lift devices, such as hoists and the like. One significant challenge is that animals often tend to resist, particularly in inclement conditions, walking up a ramp where their paws might slip or be unstable. They may have a tendency to pull away from the owner or leave the ramp partway up, thus leading to injury and challenges for reorganizing the animal and getting them back on board.
These issues have been addressed in the past, including the proposal of a deployable ramp with opaque sidewalls to confine the animal ascending the ramp to avoid a sense of elevation which might disturb some animals. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 8,899,188 to Douglas. This loading method, while helpful for distracting animals from fear of height, involve cumbersome ramps which are inconvenient to use, and require some degree of skill and strength to store and deploy.
Other efforts have led to the proposal that a ramp that can be hinged to the rear of a vehicle and articulated so that it can be folded out for access by the animal. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,715,177 to Lagergren-Julander. Use of such devices again suffers the shortcoming that the user must fold the ramp to store it in the back seat or back bay of the vehicle and to be pulled out and unfolded each time of use to be somehow releasably attached to the vehicle itself.
It is also recognized that there can be benefits to containing the pet within the confines of an enclosure to be installed in a vehicle. That is, it has been proposed to provide a collapsible framework with mesh or the like to thus provide a separate housing with the vehicle. A device of this type is shown to U.S. Pat. No. 4,803,951 to Davis. Such devices, while serving to provide some containment for the animal, are inconvenient to use and cannot accommodate other components, such as ramps, stairways or storage drawers.
It has been known that pets find it uncomfortable to lie, sleep or sit in the bay of a vehicle with planer floors and perpendicular sidewalls. To address this problem, it has been proposed to provide peripheral cushions around the edge of the bay or the like to cushion the pet. Devices of this type are shown in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0173627 to Martin, published Jul. 24, 2008. This approach, while affording some comfort, fails to provide comfort within the confines of a cage or provide contoured shape complementing the shape of a pet's body when resting.
In my U.S. Pat. No. 8,312,846, I propose a method of telescoping sections of a ramp from a cage in the back bay of a vehicle. While enjoying some success, that method had only limited horizontal reach.
It has been proposed to construct a detached folding pet staircase having horizontal treads carried from a parallelogramatic frame to be deployed from a stacked configuration to an inclined position. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 8,091,294 to Whalen. The shortcoming of a method using this device is that the frames tend to end up with loose joints, allowing the steps to wobble, thus frightening the animal.
In unrelated art it has been suggested that a pivotal ramp might be attached to a child's crib to assist in ingress and egress. This method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,893,496 to Hernandez. While practical for a child's crib, such a method still fails to provide the desired reach for convenient loading and unloading of pets.
Ladders have been proposed for loading swimmers over the rearwardly and downwardly sloped transom of a sailboat, but such devices have little practicality for loading pets into a SUV or the like.